Blizzard
by Happy1K1nob1
Summary: The same old story, a young woman left to rot in her high school locker. But then, Queen Administrator isn't the only one with an interest. What happens when a blazing ball of fire from outside the Worm Chain bestows upon our hero a rather, Chaotic, gift? Part of The Fracture
1. Snowflake 1-1

Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday dear Dean and Taylor Hebert! Happy birthday to us.

Had Taylor Hebert survived the ending of Worm, she would now officially be of Drinking Age! And in commemoration of this event, I will now post a chapter, the very first of my own Worm fiction (don't expect _too_ much from me, now. Just good quality chapters that won't come often), and I will finish off my tiny bottle of Fireball Whiskey, which I picked up off the side of the street (bad idea, but hey, I'm doing it anyways), as well as that (similarly small) bottle of wine I got from a similar source (near Wal-Mart, on the side of the road)

And don't worry if the first chapter makes no sense. It's not supposed to. But it does make a good beginning point, and I'm kinda proud of it. :)

* * *

Snowflake 1.1

A fractured image, an impression of something massive.

Then a fireball, reaching in with multicolored astral splendor.

And then it hits me.

Instantly, her eyes snap open. White-fastraggedbreathing-rustle-pounding-clopclop-chatternatter-breath-WHITE-jerk-STOP! arms bound,leather=tastesfunny sawdust/velvetPain!

Cough-a rasp, meant to be a scream.

whereaminwhereforewhereinwhatrustlerustleraspcoughleather stillhurtsdrythrouatbeepbeepbeepbeep twitchWHITEtwitchWHITE

infoSECRETShelltopayDon'tlet Tim finoudtkeephimonhisprescriptiontherewon'tbe asecond chance forKill 'sseizing!wher'esmydaughter!ohmycow!thatcockisbig!Greys'anatomyisthatnew showfromEarthAleph,right?

Vibrationnothtere asa jackhammerkills concrete

but that's not right because Konkrete beats Tank, so why does Jachkamer beat Konkrete?

soloudMEDICINE foosballCOFFEEcreditcardI'm sure Ihavenoughhurts

hurtshurtshurtsHurtsHurstHURTSHURTSHURTSHURTSHURTS!

CLONG!

Like the Daredevil himself.

CLONG!

The hour bell of the nearest church with one rings out.

CLONG!

And soothes the dreaded beast of panic and hysteria.

CLONG!

And allows sleep to slowly come.

CLONG!

* * *

Before she opened her eyes, she took stock of herself. In pain, but how was that new? Immobilized by leather straps, well that just won't do now will it?

It felt like there was a pain still there, one which needed to come out, to ache through her teeth for years if need be.

Water, she needed water.

 _A human being (average) can survive up to three days without enough water. With careful rationing, they can survive perhaps 4 or 5 days, more if you have access to enough Intravenous bags of Saline and other, necessary vitamins and minerals._

There's an IV line set into her left arm at the elbow. a medical clip (oximeter) onto her right index finger. Combined with white says she's most likely at a hospital. Memory further back says it is likely to be Brockton Bay General. Anything could've happened, but that is the most likely.

There was the sound of metal snap buttons coming undone. She was unbound.

Slowly, painfully, she pulled herself to a sitting position. She tried to swing her legs over the side and winced when the bed banged loudly as her legs hit the railing. She pulled them over the railing and pushed herself over it, landing feet first and crumpling painfully. Ghostly images started swarming her vision, even with her eyes screwed tightly shut, without hardware anyways. She tried to ignore them as she pulled herself to a more or less standing position and started to walk around the bed, ignoring the agonized beeping coming from behind her. All she knew was that a voice in her head was telling her which way water was, and that's where she wanted to go.

A feeling tugging at her as she moved in its direction around the bed. She felt like sticks and twigs and nothing more, barely strong enough to even shuffle as she held onto the bed railing for support.

 **Unacceptable.**

She really needed something to wash out her mouth of that bad taste.

People were coming down the hall, walking fast, maybe for the beeping alarm behind her.

 **You can be more.**

That and it felt like she was coming down with something, like there was a slight burning from too much mucus in the back of her throat. Should probably blow my nose too.

 **You will be more.**

She reached for the next part of the railing, and missed.

She was out of bed to cling to.

She began to fall.

A shout was heard, but it wasn't necessary.

Before she hit the ground, she grabbed it. She wasn't sure what it was, other than it was in the middle of thin air, and she could feel it, and not in a way easily described either.

With effort, she slowly pushed herself up with it until she couldn't go up any further, then she reached her hand up and grabbed another one, pulled herself up with that. Rinse, Lather, Repeat until standing.

She tried to go another step, faltered, then grabbed another, this one more in a position for a crutch than a handy little table to push off of.

Another step, another grab. Another step, another grab. She brushed into someone, but ignored them. Bad idea normally, but she couldn't afford distractions, couldn't afford to pay attention to anything else until she had some water.

After a length of time she didn't know, the 'crutches' she'd been using shimmered out of existence while under her hand and she almost slammed into a small counter. She opened her eyes, and found a small sink with a cup beside it.

She turned it on, intending to get some water, but then her eyes went wide before shutting tightly as she leaned in and vomited painfully. Not for long, but painful all the same. Eyes open again in time to see an amount of some sort of black liquid swish down the drain, slowly lightening to red.

 _Spent, wasted blood._ a piece of her mind told her. _Your Spleen isn't recovered enough yet to do any better._

She shook her head and picked up the cup and filled it, turning off the faucet when done.

The first mouthful was swished around to get out the last remnants of rapidly-fetid blood. The second didn't stop being gulped down until the cup was empty. Then she set it down and grabbed the toothbrush and brushed her teeth. They were getting a little nasy, even with the swish.

Another swish, and she set down both cup and brush, before turning around to where memory said her bed was, and immediately faltered and began to fall.

But this time she didn't catch herself.

This time, she felt strong arms encircle her as exhaustion blanketed her. She looked up and smiled, however weakly.

"Daddy." her voice came out as a pathetic mewl, but that was okay, she was safe now. Daddy was here.

He smiled. A sad, tired smile, but a genuine smile nonetheless. "Hey Kiddo."

"Tuck me in?" She asked hopefully as blackness encroached on her vision.

"Sure thing."

She didn't make it to the bed. The last thought that went through her head almost let her make it from sheer startlement, but she succumbed anyway.

Why would there be a toothbrush, at all, in a Hospital room?

More, a hospital room for a noted suicidal?


	2. Snowflake 1-2

Now, since I'm feeling generous and this much of the story has already been written, let's make sure that the ones I have hooked stick around, shall we? :)

* * *

Snowflake 1.2

She opened her eyes once more. Yep, still white.

Not that she would think they would've let her out of the hospital just yet, but still. Annoying.

A slight snore to her left startled her and she looked, feeling her face melt into a smile unbidden when she saw who it was.

Danny Hebert.

Her father.

Things had been difficult after her mother's death, they'd been slowly drifting away from each other, but it was nice to see him next to her.

...

Her mouth turned to a frown as she considered things. She put a hand to her face and had it slowly flow down, tracing her contours.

Where were her glasses? She could see her father perfectly, and yet she didn't have her glasses on. What was going on there?

She settled back down to think.

What was the last thing she remembered?

Chaos. Insanity?

No, a little too chaotic for just plain old insanity. Even the insane have a method, a reason, for whatever they see or believe. This was all jumbled together.

Okay, set that set aside for later review, because she was already in the hospital by then. What was the last thing before that?

She blinked as the images rose to her mind's eye. Whatever it was she saw in that vision, those things were massive.

But then, it cracked. Like she was watching it on an old glass-faced TV and it got knocked over, and the image froze after hitting the ground. A brilliant light sprang up out of nowhere, and then-

and then the world went technicolor! Not like it wasn't colored-in already, but after that, it looked like... like an indescribable light show. It would take some time to properly figure out how to explain it simply. Even for someone as intelligent as her, it might take some time figure out how to explain a very large and truly incredible multi-dimensional image like that.

She broke out of her reverie a moment after that and blinked. Where had that thought come from? It was like...

Like she was a completely different person for a second.

But why? She hadn't changed that much, had she?

 **Be patient, answers will come**

 **but not yet**

She jolted upright, heart suddenly pounding as the machines started complaining to her left, panic surging through her at the sudden voice in her head, the sudden sign that either she wasn't alone in her own head, or that she was going insane.

A rustle of cloth, and in her newly hyper-aware state, she snapped her head over to look at it.

Oh, just dad slowly waking up from the noise.

A clop sound just to her right and she snapped over again, this time just a female nurse with one-inch platform heels.

But though they sounded like they were right next to her ears, they were actually over 30 feet away.

"Taylor?"

The weak, sleepy sound of her father's voice reminded her to focus on the present. She shook her head and focused on the more important person in the room as she scooted over on her bed to be a little closer. "I'm here dad." She reached out to grasp his arm reassuringly, but was slowed by the clinking of a small chain, which itself stopped her a second later when she reached its end.

She looked down, and frowned at the chains on her wrist as she slowly retracted her hand, noticing just how thin her arm looked. The chains and the attatched handcuffs were rather polished, looking more like silver jewelry than steel, and didn't give her much room to maneuver. Looking up, her father gave her a tired smile, and she gave him a trepidatious one in return. "So, what's with the chains?" She asked, trying to keep her tone lighthearted, though she was internally racing to make sense of her surroundings.

From the sudden tightening pain in her father's face, she hadn't quite managed it. "Taylor, a few days ago, you were pulled from your locker and you had a psychotic break. Several people were injured, badly."

Her brows furrowed, thinking it over as she considered her response. "Badly enough to end up here as well?" She asked, legitimately concerned for the others' well being.

He shook his head. "For the most part, no, but the school wanted to press charges."

She snorted in disgust, suddenly dissmissive as fragmentary knowledge started coming to the fore. "They can try. Sure, we don't have the money for it, but they can't afford the bad PR."

His brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

She waved it off. "It's not important right now." She sat there, thinking hard for a moment. "Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Exactly how long have I been here? How many days?"

"Uh, about five days, Taylor." He said, his own frown deepening.

She frowned down at her sheets, then she lifted an arm and brought as close as she could to her other arm. Not close enough, even with a little extra trying. She growled as a part of her upper lip pulled up on the left. Then she pulled hard enough with her left to break whatever was holding the silvery chain to her bed (the chain itself being far more robust) and brought her right hand, still chained, to her left elbow, and pinched, pulling a little.

Far, far too little skin caught inbetween her fingers.

"Taylor?" Danny asked a little fearfully.

"Shh, I'm thinking." She absently said as she stared at the ceiling, trying to be gentle without pulling away her attention from her thought process.

Okay, what did she know? She knew that 5-ish days ago, she'd been stuffed into a locker filled with rotting garbage. Her own at school. It was January, the day after Christmas Break. She knew that upon being pulled out of said locker that she'd had a psychotic breakdown, perhaps one that had started inside the locker itself, and that the flailings it had caused had hurt several other people, which she had no current recollection of.

She knew that the last few moments between being pulled out and now were a near-complete blur in her memory. Not a blank spot, a missing space, but a blur where time passed with knowledge of it, but the actual events were indistinct.

She knew from one of the few coherent memories that she had the ability to create something (shields of some sort, maybe?) to support herself, thus fully marking her as a cape.

She also knew from just now, ripping off that chain which held her down, even as weak as she felt, with so little actual leverage or force applied, marked out a solid Brute rating through enhanced strength, completing the picture there as well, with a slight Thinker(?) rating for her enhanced hearing.

She knew from the pinch test that her Body Mass Index, the medical test/term which indicated whether she was at a relatively healthy weight or amount of body fat or not, said she was incredibly underweight, even though before getting shoved into her locker she'd had a bit of a paunch developing. Compare "Slightly fat" with "Skinnier than an anorexic fashion model".

Losing that much weight in such a short time (beyond being incredibly unhealthy) likely indicates some sort of healing ability, or at least something causing her body to very quickly cannibalize every last bit of fat in her body much too quickly, as if Panacea had been healing her.

Though that last possibility was pretty much impossible. Why would they call her in to help out?

Maybe she was some sort of reverse-Battery? Whereas the hero charges herself with her power before using it, her body uses stored fat and other bodily energy to charge hers? (though, how did she know how Battery's power works?)

She knew...

"Taylor?" She blew out a breath in a heavy sigh, her face relaxing from the rictus of concentration it'd been in before as her body untensed.

She knew that she had absolutely no idea what was going on, other than that she'd somehow Triggered while in the locker and she had to deal with that fallout. She looked up at his wary expression with a tired look on her own face. "Sorry, I was just trying to think things through. Couldn't figure it out."

A wary smile came over her father's face as he sighed. "That's all right." He reached over to pat her on the shoulder, but then hesitated. She smiled sadly and gently grasped his hand and placed it on her shoulder.

"I'm all right, daddy." She said reassuringly. "I'll be fine."

Then she turned her attention to his health as she began to wrap the chain around her left wrist, planning to do so with the right chain after disconnecting it from the bedframe. His face was pinched and drawn and thoroughly wan, showing clearly how much of a toll the stress had left on him. "You on the other hand, need sleep." She said with seriousness and a smile. She then made shoeing motions at him with her hands. "Go. Eat a granola bar. Find a bed to pass out on. I'll still be here when you get back." She teased him, reassuring him as she did so.

Slowly, he relaxed, and then left the room, presumably to do as suggested.

She smiled as she watched him leave, before curling up on her side and closing her eyes. She briefly considered pulling the other chain off the bedframe, perhaps to get some food or drink, but a yawn helped her decide that it was probably not worth the effort.

Tonight, she had no dreams of torment, just a feeling of peace.

* * *

So, I'm just being curious here, but what do y'all think of the story so far?


	3. Snowflake 1-3

Y'know what? Screw it. I'm just procrastinating. So, sorry for making you guys wait, but here it is, the next chapter. Enjoy, and I hope you find it makes the story a little easier to deal with, after the trainwreck the last chapter apparently was.

* * *

Snowflake 1.3

"So." Her father began the next time she was awake and had deigned to let him know. "It would appear that you are a Parahuman."

"No I'm not." The words just slipped out, and that brought on a confused look to her face. "Okay, why did I just say that? Um," She cocked her head in what was rapidly becoming a thinking expression for her, post-Locker. "Well, maybe it's because it's not from around here?" She paused, considered that, then nodded, more sure now. "Yeah, my power isn't the usual type. Not like anything you'll find here, partly because it's not just one thing, somehow focused on dimensional shenanigans." Not sure just where that little tidbit came from but keep rolling. "Instead, it's more..." She shifted her head to the other side. "Old? No, more, more like a legend. Like a fantasy. Like stories of monsters and heros or Dragons and their Slayers. That kind of old." She nodded, happy to have it settled. "But I do appear to have power, yes."

"How did it happen?" Well, there's a few things you could say about her father, but one of them was when something was settled, he could accept it and move on.

She considered. "Well, at the very least, I had a Trigger Event, like most capes here on this variant of Earth." She turned to him. "That means that I had a-" She cut herself off, made a face, then continued without telling him the whole story. "A really harsh time. Most capes also don't have it as bad as I had it, but then again, most don't have to deal with a psychopath or a sociopath focused on them either." At the look on his face, beginning to fill with rage, she put a hand on his knee and focused on the calm of the Bay just outside her window. She wasn't sure why at that moment, but she was glad as he started to calm down. "I didn't tell you because there was nothing you could do. The School administration did absolutely nothing, showing an absolutely criminal level of negligence, and outside of going to the school board, which would have been fruitless without proof or a single eyewitness account, which due to the school being run by incompetents and those blackmailed and afraid, just like the students themselves, they would've been hard pressed to get a single useful thing from them, even if they got anything at all. And besides, they have a lawyer on their side. The guilty won't be getting punished for it at all, if past events are any indication." It was starting to get scary, how she could anticipate her father's arguments just from the shifting emotions on his face. Also scary just how accurately she had just described the likely fallout. Which is to say, absolutely nothing.

Emotions and thoughts rampaged over her father's face, and she kept her thoughts on the bay for which Brockton Bay is named in the summer as she tried to keep him from exploding. She knew that he often raged against his inability to help out the other guys from the Dockworker's Union, and that his anger wasn't a calm or silent one. It was one that exploded violently when sufficiently provoked, and often took as much as a half hour or even an entire hour sometimes to cool down.

In the end, it came down to one, calmly mentioned sentence. "You're not going back to Winslow."

For a moment, she looked at him a little oddly, assessing him and his resolve. Then he added. "We'll find a way to get you up to speed, and to get you a job you will enjoy and thrive in, but you are not going to go back into that little hellhole."

She smiled at him. He probably wouldn't get much done in going against the administration, but he'd try, armed as he was with what probably won't work. Because he was just that kind of guy, to go to bat for his friends and family.

Then she thought about the fact that, as a leader of a union, as a person out to find contracts and legal, paying jobs that don't skiff the men working them, he would've had to deal with politicians and business leaders and sometimes haggle with them extensively. It was entirely possible that he had friends amongst those numbers, and they might have friends or favors that could get Winslow taken to task. So she smiled at him encouragingly and suggested as much, to find someone who could, maybe, get a surprise inspection done by the Health Department or an investigator for the School Board, to his nodding approval. Then she added "But I do still have one last thing to do there. I'll be going back, once maybe, just to do that, and get some closure there, but after that, I'm gone just like you asked."

He looked worried at that. "Anything I should know about?" he asked mildly.

She thought about it, then shook her head. "No, probably nothing more lethal than words. Then again, in the right situations, especially with certain types of sociopaths, that can be pretty lethal, but no, I'm not planning on it. Although..." She paused for a second, thinking. "Well, a can of pepper spray wouldn't go amiss." _Cheap, legal, easily dismissed, and very useful, even lethal, in the right hands or situations. Hinders eyesight on contact (major point!) or causes possible skin irritation (often a good distraction, but requires the right formula), spray cans often have flammable gaseous propellant (may explode under enough heat/pressure or be set on fire like a flamethrower), socially acceptable, easily hidden, and cheap. Oh wait, mentioned cheap twice. Well, how about..._

... _"Possible CO2 cartidge replacement"?_

...

Nope!

At least that was an idea he could get behind, if the relieved look on Danny's face was any indication.

Right about then as he began to collapse in relief, a few thoughts occurred to her.

One of which was "Why do I have voices in my head?"

Another was "How am I going to deal with the fallout of this?" Simple answer: One step at a time.

* * *

"Taylor" smiled as she moved about Winslow. Almost nobody had really registered what was going on with her and the Trio (ain't Stranger powers grand?) and the past few days had been gleefully lacking in Greg's too-close presence and other Bullcrap!

 _Now, be nice. Greg just doesn't know what he's doing with himself, and probably just has Asperger's Syndrom and it's just showing through. There are plenty of normal people who are worse, just in this school, and a number of others with an Autism Spectrum disorder who are worse off in social interaction as well. And that's just here in Brockton Bay._

"Taylor" paused. 'Hunh?'

 _Okay, think "Halbeard", and what he's been accused of having, but not as bad. It's easily misdiagnosed as really bad ADHD._

"Taylor" blinked. "Oh." Welp, you learn something new everyday.

And, isn't that the point?

Today in her replacement of Taylor she only had one class with the trio (well, duo these days, what with Madison either missing or playing hooky for the past week or so), so she went more or less invisible to the rest of the student body and gleefully spent the day watching them flounder around in futility.

Ooh, a little nudge here or there and suddenly you'd have a bunch of skinheads trying to gut a bunch of Asians or vice versa!

...

Okay, actually doing it was a _little_ excessive, but look at what She _learned!_

And then Art Class came, and she took her time with the Duo. They were really starting to question their existences, so maybe lay off a bit so that they can come back, and thus be in a better position to be put off further?

That was something Taylor had learned from them, and She had learned it through Taylor.

She paused at the end of "Used to love you", and instead of going straight to the next song, she looked Emma right in the eye, made sure that Sophia was paying attention, and then said, "You know, you promised that we'd be friends forever. That we'd stick by each other thick and thin, no matter how hard things got. That I'd always have you there, ready for me to rely on you, and once I was strong enough that I could be there for you too." Her face was rather sad as the Stranger/Master power she didn't understand kicked in, making sure that they paid attention and listened. "I guess you lied, and now I'm forced to stand alone. No friend to help. No support. And I'm forced to wonder if you were ever worth it." She let an illusory tear fall from her equally illusory left eye, expressing what little feeling she truly felt at that moment, intense as it was. The bell rang and she forced herself to get up and go to her next class, feeling a little dead inside, but fractionally better, as if a little piece of the weight on her soul had lifted. However cold a comfort it was, it had helped.

She never saw their responses, but she never really needed to, as she slowly faded out of existence.

* * *

As heavy music drowned out the world, drowned out everything that could bring a numbers question, a young girl was sitting down, trying to enjoy a book.

35.03472% chance of managing that position as you are now.

Okay, it was a dirty book, but she was actually enjoying it. Her grandfather called it a "Trashy Romance Novel", but hey, it was well-written and enjoyable!

A knock on the door cut through the music and she slid off her headphones. The woman from earlier, a gynoid with a bomb for a power generator, as she'd learned from inquiry, both to her power and to the 'woman' herself, smiled at her softly. "Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, if you're okay with Mac 'n Cheese."

She grinned back. "That sounds amazing." And honestly, it did.

True, life was still hard, and her parents were still dead, and Brockton Bay was still kind of a hole, but it was home, and it was here, and the Big Gigantic Numbers of DOOM were starting to get bigger, higher and farther away. Before 'The Event', they said the world would end in five years. Yesterday, they said it would in twenty-five, probably, and this morning the question responded with fifty years, with only a vanishingly small 2.32795% chance of the world ending within 5 years like the original charted path. Other questions about how life was going to be like often got wildly different answers, a few of which actually changed mid-answering. Life ahead was rather uncertain, but it was going to be bright.

* * *

A/N: Well, not much here, though there was a bit of continuation of a prologue which I never actually posted, but I did write. Might post it later on. This was also technically a prolongment of Interlude 1.a than a new chapter, now that I think about it, so, *shrug*

Also, I'd like to mention that I'm trying something new here to try and get more chapters out sooner here: Shorter chapters.

Other people are pretty good at it, so I'm just trying to follow that idea, especially since, if you look at it right, every ".1/.2/.3/ETC." in Worm/Worm fanfics are actually partial chapters, or chapters in an arc, depending on how you look at it. So that's what I'm trying to take off the pressure and allow more chapters out.

Okay, story aside, I've got thoughts, and I've got plans, and I've got a reputation with myself for not being able to live up to them. Let's pray that I can start changing that. Additionally, anyone got any idea what breeds Brutus, Angelica, and -...I forget the last one- are? Cause I wanna say hi to them before we catch up to cannon.

Also, it has been mentioned earlier in the thread (I think), but I feel it must be said in-story: There is a reason why PRT are not investigating "Taylor"s Master/Stranger situation on Sophia: She actually has some self-preservation. If Sophia told them that she was getting Imp'd by the girl she bullied, do you think it would go over well?


	4. Snowflake 1-4

So, yeah... sorry about the wait.

Sometimes you get something, and you wanna continue, but then you run out of things to write partly because you never had a plan in the first place and partly because you don't know what you're doing. Anybody else know how that feels?

For some, that means abandonment of a good thing. In this case? Mostly just a hiatus after this chapter and an actual re-write. Now, in this case, that means I'm probably going to completely skip over everything that happened, but that doesn't mean it never happened. I will reference it so that you know what it was.

...eventually. Or maybe in this chapter. I don't know yet, because this is the pre-chapter foreward of the rewritten chapter because, like I said, I ran out of things to say and I'm stubborn enough to not let this go just yet. Other than putting it on back burner to let it stew and create more chapters...eventually.

But, as I promised somewhere (or think I did), I am getting Taylor out of the Hospital THIS CHAPTER!

...moving right along...

...And I might not even actually say it, darn.

On the bright side, I finally found out where I'd kept that old pizza skit! So glad I had that pre-written.

* * *

Watching as her target's chest gently lifted and fell, she contemplated life as she knew it.

It didn't usually include watching near enough to a mirror image that wasn't actually herself.

"Freaky, isn't it?" A dark and shadowy voice asked.

"Yeah." She responded, mouth area twitching into multiple grimaces for short seconds as she struggled to contain her rage. Directionless violence wouldn't help anything, after all.

"Yeah." Knowing entirely too well that it wasn't the freakyness they were agreeing on, but how... _wrong_ it was, that this actually happened. "... I wanna kill 'er."

She straightened. "She wouldn't like that, y'know."

"If we could even live with ourselves, after how that, _thing_ in her head tortured them, yeah." Distaste for all things included in that sentence dripped from every word.

She took in a breath, held, then released. "Shadow?" No names mentioned by mutual agreement from long ago. Little reason to do so, but it helped.

"What is it, Sandstorm?"

"Does everything work out for the girl in the end?"

There was a long silence as a young woman that someone from the Empire would describe as either Purity's polar opposite - or her evil twin - considered her word choice. The timeline was already going to be kept, but they didn't know how at their respective ends of it.

In the end, there was only one thing to say. "About as well as the Broken Third Queen's."

Sandstorm snorted. "That is _not_ reassuring."

"Yeah, it's not supposed to be. But at least she's happy, or she will be."

"Even if she has to be _broken_ to get there?" Sandstorm asked testily.

"She's already broken, she just needs that last bit to get her ready for what she has, and what she will be."

"It's NOT **RIGHT!** " She roared as she turned on her ... friend? Teammate? Self?

"And it never will be, so long as we keep on the correct, _sane_ path." Shadow returned somberly, looking down. "So long as we don't need euthanasia." She said softly. Then she looked up, determined once more. "But she's a Slayer, a Chosen in a world seemingly without Magic, and she'll struggle to fit in at first. After that, she'll be okay. About as well as we did."

"How did you not _stop_ them?" She seethed.

Shadow was unruffled by the sudden topic shift, knowing exactly what she was talking about. "At first I didn't know. Then every time I tried I was blocked in some way or otherwise occupied."

" _How?_ "

"You'll see soon enough." She stated simply.

"And _what the hell is **that** supposed to mean?!_ "

"Just that you will." She stated simply. "You'll try, you'll fail, and you will under stand exactly what I mean. And Phoenix will clean up all our messes."

Sandstorm growled. After a moment of attempted stare-down, she turned her head, unhappy with the implication that she would fail.

"My suggestion?" Sandstorm gave no indication that she heard as she strode angrily to the window. "Head to Europe. There's plenty of things to kill out there. And if that fails, there's still Ellisburg." And with that, the powerful telekinetic of many titles disappeared out the window, the shards of windowsill barely making a sound as they first broke, then fitted back together with nary a sign the damage had ever happened.

Shadow turned back to the girl in the hospital bed. She smiled sadly. "You're gonna hurt real bad, and soon, little storm. But it'll even out, eventually, like the waves on the ocean. It'll never fully rest, but there'll be calmer sections, and rougher sections, and you'll just have to learn them." The seemingly living shadow bent over and brushed away some of Taylor's hair to fully appreciate the girl's beauty in sleep. "Rest up, little Blizzard. There's a storm coming, and you will bring the winter that breathes new life into this dying planet."

A female voice, young, shouted, attempting to attract notice. "Hey! Who're you?!" Ah, the words of a psionic. Always interesting to hear, the way their power double-layers their voice in subtle ways.

She smiled as she straightened. "Me?" She tilted her head as she pondered the question. With a nostalgic smile, she went for an old and happy standby. "Oh, no one of importance, really, Panacea. Not like you, or the girl here on the bed." She turned to the child-doctor's direction, enjoying with a grin the sudden burst of fear in recognition at her liquid shadow appearance, so much like Purity's appearance of solidified light. She'd made a name for herself, and what _fun_ it had been. "But big things are coming, and the storms are going to be a very large part of that."

"What storms?" Amelia bit out, trying to cover her fear with anger. An old tactic that Shadow knew well, from the fear she caused in so many.

Shadow smirked as she brightened the white light coming from her eyes amidst the near-featureless "darkness". "Why, two of the greatest hero-villains this world has ever seen, and neither one is actually a parahuman!" She said that last bit in excited glee, unable to contain her pride in the parts Sandstorm and Blizzard would take in the coming events. At Amy's confusion, she chuckled. "See, things are like this: If every single parahuman ability, barring a few, come from the corpse of Scion's wife, then this girl's power actually comes from Sandstorm. And that will be enough to start the process."

"Process?" She asked, confusion starting to truly overcome her fear through bravery as she waited for her sister, running to a summons that never actually made it to the aggressively arrogant shield-based parahuman's cell phone because of a signal blocker implanted in Shadow's Jaw.

Funny that.

"The signal to wake up the planet." She said ethereally, getting a real trip out of the way she was psyching the younger girl out. "It'll be slow. The planet's been asleep a long long time after all, but when it does, _everyone_ will know, and that will be the beginning of a new age. Until then?" She shrugged. "There's a dragon to defeat, a Monster to kill, and an army to destroy. Not necessarily in that order, as she begins to correct major mistakes." She paused to consider the little girl in front of her. "Oh, and make sure she keeps the Starknium she stole off that invisible guy. She'll need it. After all, a Dragon needs a boyfriend, doesn't she?" She smirked all-knowingly at the girl and began to dissipate into shadow, letting all control of her power go into the ether, as it were, as she sought out her physical body once more.

All in all? A good night's work. There was still _much_ to be done if they wanted Blizzard to succeed, whether in manipulating the Cult (which sprang up some time ago and through no fault of her own) or in making sure that certain people were... _pliable_ as the three of them began to truly prepare for the beginning of then end of an age.

Oh, taking over the world by not taking over the world and then leaving it be was so much _FUN!_ Oh, she could barely believe she'd actually stopped doing so for a full on three years straight!

* * *

She took a deep breath of fresh air, and released it. She smiled. It was a new day, and she was out of the hospital! That fresh salty air smelled like the most amazing thing right now!

She kinda wanted pizza.

She shook her head, unable to wipe the smile off her face at that silly thought. Life was being good to her for now.

Especially since she didn't have school for the rest of the week!

And if things went especially well, then she wouldn't have to come back to Winslow ever again.

Slowly, still a little shakily, she pushed herself up from the hospital's wheelchair that they'd put her in to wheel her from her hospital bed to the front door.

Yeah, Earth Gravity Normal wasn't exactly the most stable of things for her to be standing in at the moment. As soon as she was standing properly, as proof that she actually could without assistance, she steadied herself with a few discreetly placed shields and also discreetly lowered the gravity pressure in an area about 2 inches from her skin on in and began to use her shields as a cane while she gave her father a smile as they walked to his truck.

See, that was another thing she'd learned about her abilities since waking up a little more than 2 weeks ago: She could control Gravity as well as make and control her shields. To what extent, she didn't know, as without testing (and being unwilling to wreck hospital equipment more than she already has) she had no way of knowing.

So she was feeling like a creaky old woman, so what? She felt alive, and that isn't a feeling she's felt properly since her mother died.

And soon, she might be able to finally leave the prison they call Winslow!

But...

Well.

First, there was some unfinished business to settle.

And that will take the entire next week she had off school to prepare for!

Yes, things were LOOKING UP!

* * *

Roxxanne smiled to herself as she looked over her recent purchases, a few Canary CDs (including a new album let out just last week, and a special single she'd released specifically to thank her, or rather, "Quinne Calle and the woman who asked him to 'Lawyer' on her behalf"), some PRT merch, a homemade stripped-down version of Armsmaster's halberd, and a few other odds and ends, including a couple comics games and musical groups only made here on Earth Bet and a few other pieces of material, clothing included. (it costed quite a bit for a few of the odds and ends, including a small suite of things for the girls back home, but since Parian was _quite_ the seamstress, it was far more than worth it)

After arranging for it to be sent off back to... well, home (not sure where it would lay in the whole Aleph, Bet, Gimmel, Tav setup, if it would at all), a sudden sense of melancholy encompassed her.

It was a little odd, but being a villain on this world was actually surprisingly satisfying for this particular rule-maker/breaker. A smile popped up as she looked around her current office. It used to belong to a man named Thomas Calvert, the CEO office of Fortress Construction. Now it was hers, and the empire Coil had made was hers to expand upon.

The smile faded, and she wasn't sure why. Sometimes, these moods just take her, but this time, it felt like she was remotely grieving for someone in their place. Like another Slayer was dying and she was taking their battle-sister's grief to allow her to fight, to function, until the fight was over for the day and she had a chance to let it out. (wouldn't be the first time)

The door opened as an aide came in, and a sudden urge to tell someone overcame her. "Do you know what OOlyAhna Trecht means?"

"Um, no ma'am."

"It means 'Kill Me' in Treksni." Roxxanne replied. "I've heard it said a few times, mostly by warriors dying on the battlefield, but I've said it myself a few times as well."

There was silence.

"It's a thing, in my particular subculture of the Slayer mentality, that whenever you hear 'OOlyAhna Trecht', then you give to their wishes. You give them that peace and painless death that they're seeking.

"Because anything less would be needlessly cruel."

* * *

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

For all that those of us not a part of Earth Bet may focus on the Brockton Bay of today, there really is quite a bit of history to the town.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

In fact, one may say that looking into its past would be quite educational, especially in gang warfare.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

In comparison to the gangs of yesteryear, the groups we deal with today are rather flashy, but not exactly threatening. -scratch that, they're totally threatening, but still not exactly BIG NEWS, unlike those other gangs-

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The comparison is that the Empire is no longer striking down all opposed, but simply cruising on their former glory. The ABB are nothing but children playing with their fathers' guns, Coil's group just lurks there, doing nothing but waiting like a spider, while the Merchants are the only ones doing real damage, those scoffed at by _everyone_ , acting like mindless animals looking for their next high.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The gangs of Yesteryear, well, The Empire was strong, strong enough to potentially obliterate the city, if it weren't for Allfather's control over the group and their rivals, Marquis was a gentleman but also a ruthless businessman. Lustrum was seemingly diametrically opposed to the man behind the Marquis on principle, though some were unsure why, and Galvanate... actually, this reporter knows next to nothing about them. Beyond being brutes in comparison to Marquis and maybe having some sort of electricity-based theme, there is actually little information on them outside of Earth Bet.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

But the Teeth... those are another matter. While some might call the Merchants animals, they would only do so in comparison to parasites and scavengers, like raccoons and rats, scavenging for whatever they could and bearing plague, while their more harmless members looked legitimately cute.

You could not do so with the Teeth. The Teeth were animals, heavy with rabies and other infections causing insanity, disease-based enragement, and death, however slowly and painfully. What they did to their victims was usually amoral and often grotesque, though lacking a level of horror that only a bio-tinker could manage, and sometimes they managed even that.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

They were a plague upon the city, leaving corpses in their wake anywhere they went, and people breathed a great collective sigh of relief when they chose to leave for greener pastures, perhaps New York, or Jersey. Anywhere but here, they would be happy with.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

But sometimes relics are left, like this particular slaughterhouse, decorated with rotting skins, symbols almost arcane in nature-

-and recently finding new use in it's old function.

One young girl dead, but who knows how many more will follow.


	5. Snowflake 1-5

Well, a bit late, but here's the next part. I know I said I was gonna rewrite things, but as-is, it seems alright to me, as a reader.

Kinda needs a lot more worldbuilding to be up to par, but it should do, if only for now. And yeah, sorry if the previous chapter doesn't make a lotta sense, just showing some of what's going on in the shadows.

* * *

'Okay, you can do this.'

 **of course you can. shut the fuck up and do it already.**

 _Oh, shut up Balmung! She's having a hard enough time as-is without you being a stupid Queen Shard._

 **like you're being any better there Sprite**

Take a deep breath, straighten and enjoy the sound of moving spinal bone, and walk forwards. Reach forwards, you can do it.

'Oh, come the fuck on! It's just a high school front door, not the portal to your doom!'

 **can I help push you forwards?**

 _You might as well._

Gravity redirects a little around, next to, and inside, and it takes a little effort to stay standing straight, though thankfulness abides on Balmung's interference. 'Why was it so hard to go ahead?'

 _Possibly because you know you're shutting the door._ Sprite's voice is sorrowful, understanding. _This sort of thing is always hard._

Brown hair coming down to mid back with a slight curl spilled out of her hoodie as she looked around. 'Yep, Winslow is still a shithole.' Step step step.

The halls are so quiet right now. It's so, odd. Yeah, being melodramatic in the hospital is one thing, but right now? Winslow feels like a hall of the dead. An empty mausoleum, or the afteraffects of a post-apocalyptic event. The silence almost oppressive.

A feeling of fullness leaves her, and a few yards away, a fight begins to break out, creating noise in the hallway. **sound better?**

 _Ass._

She snorts, carefully avoiding a few tiles that hadn't been replaced right ceiling and floor. One would cause her to sink to her knee, possibly breaking an ankle like Laura had last year, while the others could fall on her. 'Well, not exactly what I was expecting, but yeah, it helped.'

 **my pleasure.**

She swallowed as she passed her locker, doing her level best to ignore the rotting stench of human blood that was still emanating from it. 'Looks like they skimped on cleaning it.'

 _Nah, from what I can see, they didn't even bother to do so, outside of removing the biological waste._

 **those motherfuckers.**

'Well, that fits with the staff's positions over the past year and a half. No effort put in for safety or to bother doing their jobs right, if at all, outside of their classrooms, when _they_ are supposed to be imposing order, not the idiots with knives and balls too big for their brains.'

 _Amen to that._

She hears a voice coming from the open door up ahead. Mr Gladly. Tried to be the "cool teacher", but just left her out to rot.

 **can I maim him? Just a little?**

'...no. We're not Huns.'

 **Spoilsport.**

She pokes her head in, then shuffles over, trying not to be obvious as she moves over to her target. A quick flick of her view showed that while Emma and Sophia were both here, Madison was curiously absent. 'I wonder why that is?'

 _...not sure. All I know for fact is that she hasn't been here for a few days, though not from anything long-standing. Could be a sickness of some sort, though nobody else shows recent signs, and there's nothing to indicate something else life-changing, like moving house, but that could be all parents and unexpected._

"Taylor Hebert?" Mr Gladly finally noticed. "I noticed you weren't in class earlier. Do you have a slip, explaining why you weren't here?"

 _Lookout, hostile presence to the right, by the window. Weapons are_ _ **here**_ _and_ _ **here.**_

'Got it.' Eyes close for a moment as she snorts. Sad smile. "No, I don't." Breath in. "Truth be told, I'm not coming back, not to Winslow." Move over to the window, right in front of the hostile presence, open eyes and see nothing but air- That was a SHIMMER! So, not quite perfect, but definitely difficult to see, especially through her glasses. Turn away as if she'd seen nothing. "I'm really just here to deal with unfinished business."

"And what kind of unfinished business would that be?" He asks, not unkindly.

"Well, Dad's letting Blackwell know that her lack of vigilance has been noted and will be brought up with the school superintendants, and that I won't be coming back, so you don't have to expect me back. While he's doing that, I have something to say to the one woman who had my back until she stabbed it in every wound she could find." _That's a little harsh._ **I approve.** 'Oh, shut up you two. You're distracting me.'

She turned her gaze to Emma and studied the young redhead for a moment. Striking features, ample bust, but there was something there that wasn't quite hidden by the makeup that showed that she was afraid. Why had she never seen it before? _Likely because you'd never had this calm before. This certainty that you could handle anything life could dish out._ 'Maybe.'

"Emm, I really wanted to say goodbye." There! She said it. Not every thing, but she did.

"What the shit is this, Hebert?" Sophia asked incredulously, standing up and moving to loom aggressively. Which would be quite a feat if it worked, given that while muscled and a track star, she was several inches shorter than Taylor was. Taylor looked at her for a moment as if unsure of how to deal with it, before deciding that it didn't matter at all right now. She moved forwards, towards Emma, brushing into and past Sophia as she went, ignoring what resistance the muscular African-American had given her before she'd moved on.

 _Sophia is Shadow Stalker. Ascribes to a Predator-Prey mentality, passed it on to Emma. Thinks you're weak, and your lack of resistance proves it._ **shitty home life, decent at using her Breaker state, but she uses it like a front-line Brute, rather than the Spy she should be. Want me to mess with her?** _I don't know. Taylor?_ 'Just remove the outright confrontational need, okay? Anything more can be decided later.'

She reached out and put a hand on Emma's shoulder, ignoring the flinch and looking the redhead right in the eye, trying to find the words to speak.

 _Year and a half ago, that's the change point. Summer before Winslow. Attacked by ABB thugs. We would've supported her, if she'd let us. Sophia got in the way._

 **Can I MURDER HER?**

 **'**...no. She's still too precious.'

 **Not, EMMA,** ** _Sophia_** **.**

'Nah, too precious to Emma for that. It would just send Emma to an early grave or to check herself into an asylum.'

 _But wouldn't that be a good thing?_

She closed her eyes and firmed up her grip. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you, when you needed me most. True, you decided you didn't want me in your life, but I still should've been there for you." she stepped back and brightly said, "Well, at least you're gonna get your wish. This'll be the last you see of me, if at all possible. No more need to suffer each others' BS."

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Sophia asked angrily. _She seems uncertain._

Taylor's mouth quirked into a sad smile as she turned to Sophia. "I think I'm not a predator or a prey, but rather a little girl with a gun." She said, pointing the aforementioned weapon at the track star.

Whose magazine full of bullets promptly crashed into the floor, which Taylor then stepped on.

The entire room, frozen in fear, seemed unaware of how to respond to this. "You know, if I were an animal, running on nothing but instinct, then I would shoot you here and now, knowing what I know. After all, strong and weak don't mean shit at the other end of a pistol." She gave Sophia a sad smile, slightly sickly and strained. "But I'm not here for that." Point to the right _adjust by three degrees left, one up_ and pulled the trigger once. The entire room jumped, almost seeming to recoil just as much as the gun had as the slide went back and stayed that way, bullet casing tinging off the floor and for a moment, amidst the acrid smell of gunsmoke, there was stillness.

And then the sound of a body hitting the floor rang out, and blood started appearing on the floor in a pool that started from the shimmering 'nothingness' she'd noticed earlier.

The same 'nothingness' she'd pulled the gun from.

Carefully keeping the magazine under her right foot, she moved over to the corner where the blood was appearing and reached out to where the body probably was. On contact, she had new information, since her Striker ability was more powerful on direct contact.

 _Same make and model as the one that the other guy who tried to kill you in the hospital had. curious, once again it's almost tinker-make, but really really_ not. Sprite read out the relevant info from the aether while still processing the bulk of it. _Grab the powersource. Don't want this falling into the wrong hands, and it'll make it hecka easier for the PRT and Protectorate to make claim to the body if they can see it._ She advised.

 **sounds like a stupid idea to me. Why not just steal the rig ourselves?**

 _Because, you ignorant oaf, they'll know about the rig through Sophia, and they'll want it for testing to find out what it_ actually _is. If they have it, then they can make use of it, they think. They can't, but what can they do? Besides, if_ we _have it, then that's just painting a_ Master/Stranger _target on our backs._

A few moments of feeling along lines of leather harness, she found the central focal point just like last time, in the Hospital, reached her hands around the hot part, and ripped it out. A quick movement to hide the hot thing in her sleeve as the illusion of invisibility wore off and she turned to Sophia and held out her left (unburdened) hand with a sweet smile. "Can I see your phone? I'd like to make a call, and I don't have one myself. Why mom died, after all." 'Come on, give in, let the shock do the talking, come on'

After a moment, Sophia hesitantly pulled out a very shiny silver smartphone that Taylor had never seen before and handed it over. _PRT issue, Wards phone. Slightly abused, probably hit the concrete a few times, so it's quality merchandise. Several bugs physically soldered into the circuitry, including GPS that is probably a built-in countermeasure or intended use, one that's probably a panic-button, and one that doesn't feel like it's government issue in its use, so be careful what you say._ Taylor nodded gratefully and slid it open ( _key is 1254, simple square, memorable_ ) and (with Sprite's step-by-step instructions) called the contact labeled "Console". Before the other side could say anything, she piped up with a pre-prepared speech (prepared within the last twenty seconds while pulling it up and waiting for the connection). "Sorry, but Sophia can't come to the phone right now. She asked me to call in about a possible Stranger cape in Winslow. I understand that might get to be a problem." And cut the connection (also with Sprite's help because _seriously_ , two years ago, we had flip phones. What the hell was _this_ bullshit, when was it made, and who made it government standard?) before the person on the other side could speak up.

Taylor looked Sophia in the eyes very seriously, pointing with her phone. "Okay, Sophia? Make sure that this" she waved the gun for emphasis "gets into evidence, alright? No funny business at all, make sure it gets there personally. You got me?" At Sophia's slightly disturbed nod, she slowly set down phone and gun right next to each other and next to the magazine below her foot, letting Sprite keep an eye on the corpse (just in case it wasn't, or decided to pop up and try something because fuck her life that that's a thing now) as she did so. Then she deliberately put her back to it and walked to the door, letting she small barrier that she'd put up across the room to muffle the gunshot fall, but not the careful gravity manipulation she'd been using for the entire past week since leaving the hospital to prevent spills or falls. She then turned back to Sophia. 'Balmung? Make her _listen_.' **recording** "By the way? Predators, as in animals? When they aren't experienced at killing, they make it messy, painful and violent." _Nice jab at her attempts at torture and interrogation. And her lethal arrows. And nicely picked up on them, given I didn't tell you_. 'Thank you.' "But soldiers? Humans trained to kill? They do so neatly and efficiently when possible. Like here, one bullet was all I needed, and suddenly, the class was out of danger." She paused. "Not sure if there are any others in the building, but it's possible."

And with those last ominous words, she left the stunned classroom and the oblivious school building. Her father was standing next to his beat-up red truck smiling at her in the closest thing to triumphant since his wife's death. "Everything go well kiddo?"

She took a deep breath, and smiled back, just as triumphant. "Yeah. I told off my locker and made out like a bandit." The heaviness in her sleeve a constant reminder of the powersource she still needed, well, _wanted_ to study. "The only way it'd have gone better is if I'd burned it down, but those pesky laws would've gotten in the way." She said, half-joking. Seriously, it would've been better just the burn that locker, but Winslow can continue to torture those who go there for the rest of eternity or until someone _else_ burns it down.

"Sounds great. Hop in." He said, eyes shining with pride.


	6. Snowflake 1-6

Crack!

Taylor winced as glass ended up embedded in her hand once more. Taking a moment to be angry about it, she then sighed and went over to the sink to grab the dustpan and dustbrush. Thankfully, the glass she'd had was emptied, otherwise there'd be more of a mess to clean.

Seriously, this shouldn't be happening. According to Balmung, most parahuman abilities came with instructions, subconscious and sometimes hidden though they may be.

Then again, she wasn't a parahuman, so why should she have any sort of handle on her sudden bouts of strength _anyway_?

 _You really should consider just getting some eggs. I mean come on, a dollar or less for a dozen? Great for multiple examples of testing just how gently you need to put pressure on things, and it's great for making omelettes!_

 **I don't see why you're bothering her at all, Sprite. Obviously, she just needs some time to get used to it and she'll therefore adjust to it naturally.**

'Guys, the commentary doesn't help.' She thought at the bickering voices. 'At all.'

 _Sorry._

 **why should I be sorry?**

 _of course you're not sorry. oaf._

 **who you calling an oaf, you pixie?!**

'Guys! Just let me get some fruit juice in peace for five minutes!'

There was a feeling like both Sprite and Balmung simply turned away from each other in a huff and started sulking in their respective 'corners'. As it gave her the peace and quiet she wanted, Taylor didn't bother to try and fix it right away. A thought occurred to her, so she voiced it. 'Why are you called sprite anyways?'

 _Um, because you called me that._

'Okay, why did I name you Sprite.'

 _Because you did._

'That's not an answer.'

 _I happens to be true. And besides, I can't really tell what's the actual reason._

'why not?'

 _Because I'm not exactly a fricken mind reader here._

'So how are we talking?'

 _I- ahhh..._

 **oh pipe down you idiots. tryin' ta get some sleep here.**

 _shut up Balmung_

"Taylor?" Taylor froze at hearing the tired voice, and she had a feeling that both Balmung and Sprite were in a similar state of panic and **FREEZE**. "What are you doing up so late?"

She tries to paste on a smile, though she thinks it falls a little short. "Um, just trying to get a snack." She rushes out.

His gaze leaves her face, slightly, and she tries not to cringe as he has no doubt noticed the slight cut in the shoulder of her shirt.

"I just got back from running." She says quickly, trying to keep him from asking. This obviously does not work.

"And what kind of _'running'_ would end up with you getting a cut on your shoulder with blood seeping through?" He's looking more awake now, and angry as well.

"Running through the bad part of town?" She suggests.

Even tired, the head of the Dockworkers Association of Brockton Bay had an impressively pinning stare. "Are you asking me or telling me?"

Wilting under that impressive stare, she stays silent.

"Are you trying to be a hero?" He asks, sudden concern coloring his voice. "Because as much as I approve of such I would much rather you _tell me_ before you go out."

She shrinks in further before weakly saying "I wasn't really trying to be a hero. I was, I just-" She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. "I couldn't sleep. Too much energy. So I thought getting out and running would help tire me out."

"Did it?"

She sighed. "Not really. Sprite says that it's likely to be some sort of conflict drive, not unlike the need for it most Parahumans face-"

Her father interrupted her. "What are you talking about honey?" He asked, confused. "And who's Sprite, someone I know?"

She stopped, and thougth about how to answer it, stumped. **you could always just do it bluntly.** _Like that would do us much good._ 'Shut up guys.' She closed her eyes, and went with Blamung's idea. "Okay, see-" She stopped and looked up at him. "We should probably get you sitting down for this." And with that, she trundled him down the stairs with a quick jump over the stairs and a grab of the much larger musclebound man as if he were nothing but a toddler, carrying him down to the dinner table in the kitchen and sitting him in a chair. Her use of superhuman strength, however slight, had the positive of stunning him for a short time and for her and Sprite to get their facts straight enough to convey. They already knew what happened, they just didn't know how to explain it right before then. Since she needed a little more time, she grabbed a few things to make coffee the way her father liked it, taking the rather strong coffee from the pot she'd made earlier and gingerly adding in a few teaspoons of sugar (not quite avoiding cracking the mug) and a large amount of liquid creamer. She set it down in front of her father and sat down across from him, waiting for him to take a sip.

"When I was in the locker, I went through something. According to the Parahumans Online forums (because the actual wiki pages are near-complete wastes of space), what happens to make a parahuman is that a normal person with the capability to become a parahuman goes through an incredibly bad time- like the Locker was for me- , often without any sort of support but not always, and that is called a 'Trigger Event'. Most parahumans have had at least one, though second triggers like Narwhal have had two and Balmung says that a few never had one but instead received theirs through another method. For me, this was much the same except, something," She paused here, unsure of how to word it. "I want to say it _fractured_ the process of gaining my parahuman ability, but it really just barged in."

"I thought you said you weren't a parahuman, back in the hospital." Her dad pointed out.

She nodded. "Yeah, apparently that was maybe ninety, ninety-five percent true. I'm not a parahuman, but I had the structures scientists and doctors have identified as being a source of sorts for Parahuman abilities. While I don't have any sort of control over it, I do indeed have the source of one, a Shard as they call themselves. Normally, they aren't really alive, but mine is, probably because of that odd thing that barged in during the process. We decided to name it after another version of myself, given that we could see glimpses of other Earth Bets, and Balmung was alive. That said, the original Balmung was an intelligent Endbringer who fought as a hero and as a villain to save lives. Nearly indestructible, and dreadlocked like my Balmung is now, but dedicated to be sure.

"Sprite on the other hand..." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Sprite is more a manifestation of whatever it was that barged in and attached itself to me the way Balmung was going to, based on my personality -also like Balmung. Sprite also acts as a filter to one of my more esoteric abilities- a variant of what she calls 'Psychometry', which is a Striker-Thinker power where anything I touch, I know practically anything about it. To a degree, I can also get skills that object was involved with, as I figured out when I touched your handsaw and hand sander in the basement. I, don't think that part is permanent." She said, thinking about it, eyes on the ceiling. "I don't really recall how to use them at the moment, though I'm sure Sprite could tell you."

There was a silence in which Taylor wasn't really ready to see the look on her father's face, so she kept on studying a slight mis-match in the ceiling's plastering. Did something break through once and it got patched up unevenly? "I'd feel a little better about this if I had more proof on the matter."

 _May I speak up a little? He seems a little worried._

'Of course. _If_ you can find a way that doesn't speak through my mouth. I think he'd find that rather freaky.'

There was a pleased sensation from Sprite's "direction". _Of course._

There was a tap on Taylor's left shoulder and she looked there, finding a smiling, if see-through ethereal version of herself looking very much like her mother. If at about twelve years in age and five feet in height. Childish and innocent, but starting to bloom into a woman, who happens to be rather tall. Sprite looked over at their father and continued for her. " _Hello Danny._ _I'm Sprite._ " Thankfully, she sounded more like Taylor herself -though ethereal-, much like in her own head, rather than Anne-Rose did. " _We're not entirely sure on why this is happening, but Balmung and I have a few ideas. One possibility is that Balmung's enforced drive towards conflict was also instilled in Taylor, but from Taylor's Psychommetry, that really isn't likely. What is more likely is that there were a few surprise packages inside the energy-data packet that turned into me when it was installed in Taylor. I can't really think of anything else like that, but it does explain multiple things, such as the minor Brute package that Taylor just showed off, the non-Manton-Limited shields and relatively minor gravity control she's been showing ever since waking up in the hospital to cover for her body's slow adjustments to being moderately healthy again after both the locker and some part of me fighting off all the infections the locker gave her, as well as my own ability to be here in front of you and talk when I am, in reality, mostly just a secondary personality glitch created by forces outside of our understanding._ " She'd have given the ethereal-looking 'girl' a dirty look if she hadn't fully agreed. She was lucky she didn't feel the need to hide any supposed weakness.

" **personally? I think the stupid fairy is right about that part.** " Both Taylor and Danny started at that and looked towards the new voice. Deep and rough, the voice rather fitted the violently-inclined Balmung, just as her athletically muscular form covered only by a well-filled sports bra (high B-cup or low C-cup at the most, thankfully. Unlike Emma's D-cups) and compression shorts that went to mid-thigh, with odd white beads littering her dreadlocked near-black hair. The face however, though agitated and almost angrily bored, was unmistakably Taylor's. " **whatever's driving Taylor outta the house ain't me. 'Sides, if it had come from me, then her Brute-Thinker package would have a more instinctual guidebook to it because she'd want it and I'd help control it. No broken dishes that way, mostly.** " She looked down at Taylor. " **you do know that Sophia probably won't take being looked down at well, right?** "

Taylor nodded. "But a few people have her on a leash, so she probably won't do anything serious anytime soon."

" _Unless she thinks she can get away with it._ " Sprite pointed out.

Taylor rolled that thought over in her head and shrugged. "Well, at least we have that pepper spray in case we meet her in a dark alleyway."

There was a simple, assenting silence acknowledging the point and the four of them simply sat there, fully awake and Danny enjoying his coffee. Then he spoke up. "You said that you wouldn't be able to speak with me without one of those surprises, correct Sprite?"

Sprite nodded. " _Yeah, I'd just be forced to use Taylor's mouth to speak. Which with Balmung speaking too that could be a bit of a pain._ " She added, giving the muscular lookalike a dirty look.

"What precisely are you doing then to speak?" he asked calmly, curious about what is going on with his daughter.

" _I-_ " Sprite blinked. How Taylor was sure she did that, she wasn't sure. " _I'm not entirely sure._ " Sprite not knowing something? Even after only a week or two, that's a little creepy. There was a pause. " _Um, I think I'm using the power I was born from through Taylor as a relay to create an illusion of myself so that you can see and hear me, while I am semi-physically outside her body through Astral Projection, which is known in Layman's Terms as an Out-of-Body Experience. I_ think _that's what's going on._ "

" **well that was fast.** " Balmung noted dryly.

Sprite frowned. " _Yes, that was rather fast. Almost like it was, prepared or something._ " She looked over at Balmung. " _I haven't found much of anything prepared like that. It's kinda spooky._ "

" **well, whatever it is, I think Taylor's calmed down enough to sleep for a few hours.** " Balmung noted, beginning to fade away. " **after all, if we want to not be arrested for Truancy, we should probably get that GED test out of the way, right?** " With those words, Balmung was gone completely and back inside her head.

" _She's right._ " Sprite said, looking at Taylor. " _You need some sleep, best get to it._ " And with that, Sprite faded away as well, appearing in Taylor's mind as well. She looked over at her dad, who smiled back.

"Go on kiddo, I'll be fine." As she started making her way to the stairs, interrupted by a yawn, he continued. "It's nice to know that you won't be completely alone. Especially if you do get into a fight." A moment later, as she was at the top of the stairs, he added softly. "Good night."

She mumbled a good night back, and disappeared under the covers, dead to the world.

* * *

A bit short, comparatively, but it felt like a good place to stop, and it shows _PROGRESS!_

So yeah. Still trying to get out of the beginning, without leaving you in the dark. This is new territory for me, frameworking properly, but hopefully it's working out well enough. Feel free to tell me what you think and where I or my writing in-story or in general could be improved.


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